Pocket God vs. Desert Ashes Coming to PS4, PS Vita

Desert Ashes just came out a few weeks ago, and I want to thank the PS Vita fans who have been playing it so much.

Now I’m back to announce a spinoff of the Desert Ashes franchise. This time it’s something special — I’m sure many of you know the succesful game and comic series Pocket God. We have partnered with Bolt Creative to bring you Pocket God vs Desert Ashes.

In a way this title was always meant to happen. A few years ago I was reading a interview with Dave Castelnuovo, and I saw how much he had liked my old title Mecho Wars. Then I mentioned on Twitter that I was playing Pocket God, and Dave saw.

We both loved each others’ work, and I got to work with Bolt Creative at one point with both Dave and Alan and it was a fun experience.

So once I finished Desert Ashes last year, I decided to hit them up to make this happen.

Pocket God vs. Desert Ashes will play similarly to Desert Ashes, so you will get the usual campaign, skirmish and multiplayer modes.

The PS Vita, PSTV and PS4 versions will also get their own exclusive multiplayer maps too, and possibly more things to come in the future. The Pocket God franchise does have a reputation for doing lots of updates :)

To celebrate this annoucment, there will be double XP in Desert Ashes for the next 48 hours.

Dave Castelnuovo // Programmer, Bolt Creative

I’ve known Luc for some time. We were both around in the early days of the mobile gaming revolution, and he was kind enough to create this game/cross over with characters from both our games. Like he said, I really love Mecho Wars and it’s awesome to be a part of its spiritual successor.

I’ve owed my PS Vita since day 1, and before that I remember standing outside the Metreon all night to get my PSP when it launched. PS Vita is such a great gaming platform; it’s the only mobile device that has real console-like controls and marries that with things we play with in the mobile world like touch screens and accelerometers. I hope this is the first of many games we launch on the platform.

Allan Dye // Designer, Bolt Creative
I’m a huge fan of Luc’s work, so I was excited when he came to us with the idea of mashing up Pocket God with Desert Ashes. As the designer of the Pocket God characters, I personally get a kick out of other interpretations and Luc’s are awesome! I love the off-center humor he injects into everything and it meshes great with the PG humor. As a bonus, he added a few new characters, which I think are fantastic!

There is definitely something about Mecho Wars (and now Desert Ashes) that really clicks with me where other strategy games don’t. I bought the add-on campaigns for Desert Ashes and I play a little bit every night. Gotta get some of that extra XP!

I love the gameplay and art of Desert Ashes/Mecho Wars, and bought all three “episodes” currently available. I do hope that there’s more DLC coming!

The “story” is really lacking, and the number of misspelt words and incorrect grammar in the game text is borderline ridiculous. I guess SCEA QA doesn’t do anything for Vita-only titles any more? I still finished the game regardless, but…

I’ve never gotten the multi-player to work. I can connect with people, I can take a turn, but almost no one makes the next move. I keep winning by default, but that doesn’t move the XP forward at all. I’m only missing that one level up trophy to be at 100%. I’ll try again for the next few days, hoping that it picks up :/

Sony’s QA only does compliance checks for third parties. They check for issues such as crashes, save file corruptions and proper button icons (there are many other mandated checks). Their responsibility is making sure every game provides a consistent, user friendly experience. Issues such as grammar, framerate, resolution, general bugs (textures missing, algorithms malfunctioning) are not covered under first-party compliance checks, and fall on the responsibility of the developer, not Sony.

If you asked me “Chocobo, what is the least likely game to be mentioned in 2015?” I wouldnt have said Pocket God, because how relevant is Pocket God in 2015? Used to love that lil game when I was in HS. Probably one of the OG great iOS games. (Also im pretty sure I saw Pocket God was sitll being updated like, wow. Dedication. Good on you, devs.)